Getting Listed In Yahoo! Is Tough, Not Mentioning Optimum Listing

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How To Get Optimum Listings In Yahoo!

Back to part 1

Assuming that your site is not listed, your objective is to get your site a higher ranking. Here are some factors which influence the ranking of your site in the Yahoo search:

1) Presence of keyword or a part of the keyword somewhere in the name of the category or a higher level category.

2) Click Popularity. When a user searches for something in Yahoo, it tries to find out which sites best satisfied the user's needs by keeping track of two things: a) which sites the user clicked on and b) how much time the user spent in those sites. The logic behind this is that if a user clicked on a particular site and spent a lot of time there, that site must have satisfied the user's needs and hence, must be relevant to that particular keyword. In this case, the site's click popularity for that keyword improves and so does its ranking for that keyword.

Don't try to improve click popularity of your site by regularly clicking on your site's listing in Yahoo!, and then by not going back to Yahoo. Yahoo keeps track of IP address and ignores repeated clicks on the same site from the same IP address. It also uses cookies to track visitors activities.

There are only two ways of improving click popularity of your site - the description of your site in Yahoo needs to be attractive and you need to build an excellent web site with great content which satisfies your visitor's needs so that they stay longer in your site.

3) Presence of keyword or a part of the keyword in the Title and Description. The Title and Description that you use to submit your site to Yahoo should contain important keywords. Note that this Title and Description is not the one that you have coded in the Title and Description tag of your home page. Rather, it is the Title and Description you use when submitting to Yahoo.

4) Prominence of the keyword in the Title and the Description. Prominence means how close the keyword is to the beginning of the Title and Description. Other things remaining the same, closer the keyword to the beginning, higher your ranking.

5) Presence of keyword or a part of the keyword in the URL. You will get a slightly higher ranking if the keyword, or part of it, is also present in the URL of your site.

Title

Now we talk about the Title some further. The Title is important not only because the presence of keyword in the Title helps to boost your ranking, but also because sites in the various categories in Yahoo are listed alphabetically according to its Title. So if your site name starts with letter "A", you will be listed higher than starting with "Z". Starting with numbers will be even better.

However, Yahoo! insists that the Title should always be the official name of your site. So, plan earlier.

Description

When you write the description, your aim is to make the Yahoo editor's job as easy as possible. You should not make the editor feel that she needs to edit your description in any way. Once the editor starts to edit your description, you risk having your important keywords removed from description or worse, having it changed in a way which does not reflect the content of your site.

Your description should be a single sentence which conveys what your site is all about and contains the most important keywords as close as possible to the beginning of the description.

However, your description should not just be a list of keywords. It should be a proper sentence and grammatically correct. It should also be attractive to your visitors so that they will actually click on it.

Here are the rules that you should remember when writing the description:

1) Make sure that the description can tell a visitor what your site is all about. Things like "Welcome to my site" does not tell a visitor what your site does.

2) Avoid hype of any sort. Avoid using exclamation marks. Phrases like "The best", "The cheapest" will be immediately removed - at the best. The editor may just ignore your submission if she smells any hypes.

3) Don't capitalize any word in your description - not even the first word. For some reason, Yahoo prefers that the first word of your description is not capitalized. If you look at the sites in any Yahoo category, you will find that almost none of them have the first word capitalized. Of course, if some of the words in the description are proper nouns, then you should capitalize them.

4) Write the description in the third person. Don't say "We offer...", just say "offers ...".

5) Keep it short, 12 words at the most. Longer the description, higher the probability that the editor will want to edit it. Your aim is to have the editor accept the exact description in order to ensure that your keywords are not removed from it.

6) Check for typos and grammatical mistakes.

Proper category to submit

First of all, you need to determine whether your site is regionally specific. If yes, then you should submit your site to the appropriate Regional Category in Yahoo.

If your site is commercial in nature and is not regionally specific, it belongs somewhere under the Business and Economy > Shopping and Services or Business and Economy > Business to Business categories. If your site is targeting at individual consumers, then your site needs to be under the Shopping and Services category. If your site is targeting at other businesses, it needs to be in the Business to Business category.

In most cases, you need to dig deeper to find the exact, proper category to submit. Simply search for the most important keywords you are targeting at. Go through all the categories which the top ranking sites belong to. Note down the categories which contain sites which are very similar to yours.

In many cases, there will only be one category which contains sites similar to yours and this is the category to which you should submit your site. If you find that there is more than one category which contains sites similar to yours, and if you are convinced that all these categories are applicable for your site, select the two categories which contain the least number of sites as your primary and secondary categories.

Business express submission

If yours is a commercial site and is not regionally specific, you have no choice but to pay them $299 for the Business Express submission option.

Paying them $299 does not guarantee listing in Yahoo directory and your site is not given any preference in its rankings. Using the Business Express option merely guarantees that your site will be reviewed within 7 days and that, in case it is not accepted, you will be told why your site was not accepted. You also have a chance of appealing a rejection within 30 days.

Free submission

If your site does not belong to the two commercial categories, you can either submit for free, or use the Business Express submission option. However, your site may or may not be reviewed with free submission and you don't even know it.

Unless you are very lucky, if you use the free submission, your site may not be accepted in your first try. Resubmit a month later if nothing has happened.

Luckily, all local Yahoo sites in Asia accept free submission for all categories. But no guarantee of review.

Your site is listed

Once you have got your site into Yahoo, it will be added to Yahoo's What's New section. Furthermore, your site will be marked as new and will be placed at the top of the categories for 1 week. This placement at the top can bring in quite a few visitors to your site every day. After the first week, the position of your site in the categories will be according to the alphabetical ranking of your Title.

Back to part 1

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